What's New

Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution by Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, and Richard Fisch. This book makes a structural distinction that sits underneath everything the research on self-concept change documents: the difference between first-order change, which is variation within a fixed system, and second-order change, which changes the structure of the system itself. A person who tries harder within their existing self-concept framework, adopts a more positive narrative about the same underlying beliefs, or develops better coping strategies without revising the self-model is engaged in first-order change — movement within the system. Genuine self-concept change, the kind that alters the self-verification pull rather than merely working against it, is second-order change: it changes the structure that produces the problem rather than the problem's surface expression. Watzlawick and colleagues, writing from a brief therapy tradition, document the paradoxes that first-order change produces — the ways in which trying harder within a broken framework makes the problem worse — and the specific conditions under which second-order change becomes possible. For the entrepreneur or professional trying to understand why sustained effort at self-improvement has not produced genuine change, this book offers the most precise available account of what kind of change they have been attempting and what the alternative requires.